


Mercy

by TryingCrying



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Death, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Whump, holy hell tense and ambiguous he kicked my ass on this one, no shipping to be found here, series end, this got really sad and I'm sorry, this was tough to write but i had to make it before the series ended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27038614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TryingCrying/pseuds/TryingCrying
Summary: The one where they all die but it's still a happy ending.My personal take on what might be the end of the story. This show will always hold a special place in my heart, and this hadcanon has stuck with me for years until I finally wrote it out.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, team free will - Relationship
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Sam’s first memory was of Dean. Because of course it was.

Nothing in his life was as consistent as Dean. They’d always been close, even if distance worked differently for them than it did for everyone else. Sam looked for Dean the way the other kids at Stanford had looked at their own shadows. Even when Dean was a million miles away, he wasn’t ever more than an arm’s length away. Except for the times he was within arm’s reach, but still a million miles away. You could count on him if there was danger though, and there was _always_ danger.

It’d been the very first time Sam witnessed a hunt go sideways. He couldn’t be sure how old he was. Not like he had distinct years at a school to keep his childhood from running together into a series of hunts gone sideways. He just knew he was young enough he didn’t understand what the phrase ‘went sideways’ even meant. And he was small enough that Dean could still carry him easily.

Dean slapped a hand over Sam’s eyes. So hard it stung. Then scooped Sam into his arms before the hair on the back of either of their necks had finished standing up.

Sam whimpered. Cried. Clawed at his brother. Begged to be put down. Complained—loudly—that he couldn’t breathe with his face pressed against Dean’s shoulder like that. Sam only realized how serious the situation was after he squeaked that Dean was hurting him, and _still_ Dean didn’t move. Didn’t release his death grip. Didn’t breathe.

The smell. Sam could still smell it, even with his head tucked under Dean’s chin.

Then Dean blurted a word that Sam had never heard before. It echoed into the dead silence, bouncing off the walls of no longer safehouse. Then he let loose a string of words Sam had since been told never to repeat under any circumstances. Then he shouted a curse at their father who shouted one back so Dean didn’t say anything after that. Sam curled closer against his brother, grabbing fistfuls of Dean’s coat as the tight embrace became mutual.

Dean’s heartbeat thundered against his ear.

“ _Don’t look, Sammy.”_ Dean whispered, and his voice was almost unrecognizable. _Curdled._

Sam never forgot what it sounded like.

Since then he’d had years of practice understanding everything Dean wanted to say with just that single word. _Sammy._ In two syllables he could tell _exactly_ what his brother was thinking.

Bobby would tease them about it if you got a few drinks into him. Said he knew parrots with larger vocabularies and honest to god chuckled every time he caught the brothers having full conversations by just saying names back and forth.

They built an entire language in which the only words were each other’s names.

Which was why when Dean grabbed his face and said _“Don’t look, Sammy”_ with that same horrific thing in his voice Sam knew this was the end. There wasn’t anything else to say.

This time when he heard it, Sam recognized the thing in Dean’s voice for what it was: _Death._

“Don’t look, Sammy.”

It was dark. There was a siren, somewhere. Sam was sprawled awkwardly, the angles of his body not making sense anymore. His pain was bone deep. Sam was much too big for Dean to easily carry him anymore.

He buried his head in his brother’s shoulder. He grabbed fistfuls of his brother’s jacket. Sam Pressed his ear close to Dean’s chest, heartbeat thundering in his ears.

“Don’t look Sammy.” Dean said, still with death in his voice. Dean didn’t have to say anything else.

And there, clinging to his brother, Sam’s first memory finally matched his last.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean liked to fix things. Dean was _good_ at fixing things. Even better at putting them back together.

It’d started with his mother’s watch. Then his brother’s baby monitor. His father’s combination lock. His father’s lighter. His Fathers rifle. His own family. If it had pieces, he knew what they were and where they went.

It’d driven Sam up the wall in their early days of working together. Once he’d returned from a grocery run to find the motel television spready out on the carpet. Before that moment Sam would have put money on the fact that his brother was much more likely to dismantle the television with a baseball bat rather than a screwdriver.

Dean had just looked at him, at the way he stood stunned in the doorway.

The moment of silence was tense before it deflated into just being awkward. Sam picked his way across the floor, avoiding piles of screws and stripped wires to set the grocery bags on the spindly motel table.

“Shower’s dripping, a bit.”

Dean just nodded. 

At the bunker Sam had taken to hiding things in his room when he didn’t want Dean to dismantle them. If Dean found it, he never said anything. Which mean either he had no idea or was just biding his time. Sam never asked.

It wasn’t Dean’s worst coping mechanism. Sam tried not to complain, just followed behind his whirlwind of a brother. So, He didn’t complain when Dean popped the keys off of even their backup laptop. He didn’t complain when he redid every lock in the bunker. He complained after Dean got a concussion so bad taking him to the hospital was the only way Sam could get him to stop obsessively cleaning the guns.

Sometimes the Impala was in smaller pieces when Dean was tinkering with it than it’d been after a wreck. Sam could rebuild the car in his sleep, but he always humored Dean when his brother took to quizzing him on it. Sometimes Dean was in small pieces after a hunt.

One day he might be able to rebuild death. He was already startling familiar with it. He’d seen it up close and personal enough times for the mystique to be worn thin. He could take death apart no problems, and it could almost put it back together.

_Almost._

“Sam?” Dean reached for his brother.

Full moon. Lots of light. Sporadic, fat drops starting to soak through his clothes. The rain dotted the pavement, bringing up the scent of pine. Made the puddles of blood run.

“Sammy.” Dean closed his fingers into a fist against Sam’s shirt.

Sam was shivering but Dean wasn’t. He couldn’t tell which is worse so he just pulled his brother close.

“Don’t look, Sammy.”

Dean could take his brother apart and he knew how to put Sam together. Dean could take himself apart—but he’d forgotten where all the pieces went, now that he was scattered across the ground like an old motel television.

“Sammy?”


	3. Chapter 3

“SAM!”  


Dean awoke in the impala.  


He jerked against the seatbelt, overwhelmed. The impala was whole again. He was whole again. In the driver’s seat of his own car, parked somewhere near a road judging by the sound of rumbling trucks.  


His gun? Gone. Knife in his boot? Gone. Sam? Gone.  


Dean stumbled from the car; panic so big in his chest it was the only emotion there was room for.  


“Hey, hey. I got you.” Sam’s voice was firm.  


Dean couldn’t see more than a silhouette through his still adjusting eyes, but the voice was as familiar as his own. He recognized instantly.  
“Sam?” he asked, voice muffled by grief and relief and his brother’s shoulder.  


“Hey, Dean.”  


And he didn’t have to say anything else.  


The sound of footsteps broke a long silence. They turned to see Cas smiling at them.  


“Cas!” Sam sagged against his brother, his face mirroring the relief on Cas's.  


“Finally.” The angel smirked. “You took so long we started taking bets. You two just made me a lot of money.”  


“Dude, don’t be happy that we died.” Dean squinted around the landscape, blinking as it refused to come into focus. “That is what this is, right? We’re dead.”  


After a moment of silence Sam let out a low whistle.  


“Are…you sure?” Dean’s brows pulled together in thought. When Cas opened his mouth to respond, Dean amended. “I know we’re dead. I’m not stupid. But I was kind of expecting a one-way ticket downstairs, and this seems awfully pleasant to be hell.  


Cas blinked at him. “this is exactly where you two are supposed to be.”  


When Dean didn’t look convinced, Cas asked, “What do you see, exactly?”  


The details came into focus slowly, then all at once.  


Sam threw his head back, laughing. “Of course!”  


“The roadhouse.” Dean whispered.  


Cas glanced up, face thoughtful as his eyes roamed. “hmm.”

Cas was standing on the porch of the roadhouse. An orange sun sunk in the background, casting warm summer shadows. A herd of deer grazed in the field across the lot, heads popping up to survey the highway. The impala looked just waxed. Just the bassline of a song thumped through the front doors, bringing with it air that smelled like food.  


“Come on,” Cas motioned. “we’ve been waiting for you.”  


“Waiting?” Sam asked.  


Cas just smiled, wrinkles showing at the edge of his eyes.  


“It’s time for dinner. We cooked your favorite, Winchester special.”  


“We? Cas who’s waiting?”  


Cas swung the door open, and the sound of a crowd grew louder, voices drifting toward them.  
“Everyone.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear, this is not my fault.  
> Jerk this is your fault because you’ve been encouraging me to write lately.  
> And Assbutt this is your fault because you didn’t drop me on sight when I told you about this headcanon 7 years ago.


End file.
